Coffee farmers don’t need to rely just on the presence of landscape-level forests to provide pollinator resources. Their own farm management can have strong impacts on local bee abundance and diversity.
Research on coffee growing
As has been found in previous studies, birds on Jamaican coffee farms reduce insect pests, providing an important ecosystem service worth 12% of the total crop value.
Earlier this year, the news of the “discovery” of a caffeine-free species of coffee from the Cameroon created a bit of a stir. This species was actually first collected in 1983, but remained unstudied and not described to science until…
The water footprint of coffee and tea consumption in the Netherlands. 2007. Chapagain, A.K., and A. Y. Hoekstra. Ecological Economics 64:109-118. This is not a newly published paper, but I found it well worth summarizing here. “Footprint” evaluations — ecological,…
Attitudes and knowledge of shade-coffee farmers towards vertebrates and their ecological functions [PDF]. 2009. P. López-del-Toro, E. Andresen, L. Barraza and A. Estrada. Tropical Conservation Science 2:299-318. The authors of this study interviewed 36 Mexican shade coffee farmers regarding their…
Climate change will likely alter the distribution of the world’s worst coffee pest, a minute beetle called the coffee berry borer (CBB), Hypothenemus hampei.
Bakermans, M. H., A. C. Vitz, A. D. Rodewald, and C. G. Rengifo. 2009. Migratory songbird use of shade coffee in the Venezuelan Andes with implications for the conservation of the cerulean warbler. Biological Conservation 142:2476-2483. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.05.018 Most studies of…
A study from India measures the invasiveness of coffee into forest fragments from adjacent farms.
Comparing tree diversity and composition in coffee farms and sacred forests in the Western Ghats of India.
Three decades of deforestation in southwest Sumatra: effects of coffee prices, law enforcement and rural poverty. 2009. D. L. A. Gaveau, M. Linkie, Suyadi, P. Levang, and N. Leader-Williams. Biological Conservation 142:597-605 . I’ve written in the past about Sumatra’s…
Ethiopian coffee cultivation — Implications for bird conservation and environmental certification. This is probably the first peer-reviewed paper specifically about coffee growing/shade coffee and birds in Ethiopia.
Home garden coffee as a repository of epiphyte biodiversity in Ethiopia. 2008. K. Hylander and S. Nemomissa. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 6:524-528. Nearly all the work that’s been done examining the relationship between shade coffee and biodiversity has…
Shade coffee farms promote genetic diversity of native trees. This study looked found that shade coffee farms are valuable for dispersal of genes between forest remnants.
Agricultural intensification within agroforestry: the case of coffee and wood products. 2008. Rice, R. A. Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment 128:212-218. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2008.06.007 Robert Rice, of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, surveyed 338 owners of coffee farmers in Peru and Guatemala to…
Biodiversity loss in Latin American coffee landscapes: review of the evidence on ants, birds, and trees. 2008.
